The Twelfth Card (3 page)

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It’s nothing less than a miracle.

Somewhere in the brain or the body a stimulus, either mental or physical, occurs—I want to pick up the glass, I have to drop the pan that’s burning my fingers. The stimulus creates a nerve impulse, flowing along the membranes of neurons throughout the body. The impulse isn’t, as most people think, electricity itself; it’s a wave created when the surface of the neurons shifts briefly from a positive charge to a negative. The strength of this impulse never varies—it either exists or it doesn’t—and it’s fast, 250 m.p.h.

This impulse arrives at its destination—muscles, glands and organs, which then respond, keeping our hearts beating, our lungs pumping, our bodies dancing, our hands planting flowers and writing love letters and piloting spacecraft.

A miracle.

Unless something goes wrong. Unless you’re, say, the head of a crime scene unit, searching a murder
scene in a subway construction site, and a beam tumbles onto your neck and shatters it at the fourth cervical vertebra—four bones down from the base of the skull. As happened to Lincoln Rhyme some years ago.

When something like that occurs, then all bets are off.

Even if the blow doesn’t sever the spinal cord outright, blood floods the area and pressure builds and crushes or starves the neurons. Compounding the destruction, as the neurons die they release—for some unknown reason—a toxic amino acid, which kills even more. Ultimately, if the patient survives, scar tissue fills the space around the nerves like dirt in a grave—an appropriate metaphor because, unlike neurons in the rest of the body, those in the brain and spinal cord do not regenerate. Once dead, they’re numb forever.

After such a “catastrophic incident,” as the men and women of medicine so delicately put it, some patients—the lucky ones—find that the neurons controlling vital organs like lungs and heart continue to function, and they survive.

Or maybe they’re the
unlucky
ones.

Because some would rather their heart stopped cold early on, saving them from the infections and bedsores and contractures and spasms. Saving them too from attacks of autonomic dysreflexia, which can lead to a stroke. Saving them from the eerie, wandering phantom pain, which feels just the same as the genuine article but whose searing aches can’t be numbed by aspirin or morphine.

Not to mention an utterly changed life: the physical therapists and the aides and the ventilator and the catheters and the adult diapers, the dependency . . . and the depression, of course.

Some people in these circumstances just give up and seek out death. Suicide is always an option, though not an easy one. (Try killing yourself if all you can move is your head.)

But others fight back.

“Had enough?” the slim young man in slacks, white shirt and a burgundy floral tie asked Rhyme.

“No,” responded his boss in a voice breathless from the exercise. “I want to keep going.” Rhyme was strapped atop a complicated stationary bicycle, in one of the spare bedrooms on the second floor of his Central Park West town house.

“I think you’ve done enough,” Thom, his aide, said. “It’s been over an hour. Your heart rate’s pretty high.”

“This is like bicycling up the Matterhorn,” Rhyme gasped. “I’m Lance Armstrong.”

“The Matterhorn’s not part of the Tour de France. It’s a mountain. You can climb it, but you can’t bike it.”

“Thank you for the ESPN trivia, Thom. I wasn’t being literal. How far have I gone?”

“Twenty-two miles.”

“Let’s do another eighteen.”

“I don’t think so. Five.”

“Eight,” Rhyme bargained.

The handsome young aide lifted an acquiescing eyebrow. “Okay.”

Rhyme had wanted eight anyway. He was elated. He lived to win.

The cycling continued. His muscles powered the bicycle, yes, but there was one huge difference between this activity and how you’d pedal a stationary bike at Gold’s Gym. The stimulus that sent the impulse along the neurons came not from Rhyme’s brain but from a computer, via electrodes connected
to his leg muscles. The device was known as an FES ergometer bike. Functional electrical stimulation uses a computer, wires and electrodes to mimic the nervous system and send tiny jolts of electricity into muscles, making them behave exactly the same as if the brain were in charge.

FES isn’t much used for day-to-day activity, like walking or using utensils. Its real benefit is in therapy, improving the health of badly disabled patients.

Rhyme had been inspired to start the exercises because of a man he much admired, the late actor Christopher Reeve, who’d suffered an even more severe trauma than Rhyme’s in a horseback-riding accident. Through willpower and unflagging physical effort—and surprising much of the traditional medical community—Reeve had recovered some motor ability and sensation in places where he’d had none. After years of debating whether or not to have risky experimental surgery on his spinal cord, Rhyme had finally opted for an exercise regimen similar to Reeve’s.

The actor’s untimely death had inspired Rhyme to put even more energy than before into an exercise plan, and Thom had tracked down one of the East Coast’s best spinal cord injury doctors, Robert Sherman. The M.D. had put together a program for him, which included the ergometer, aquatherapy and the locomotor treadmill—a large contraption, fitted with robotic legs, also under computer control. This system, in effect, “walked” Rhyme.

All this therapy had produced results. His heart and lungs were stronger. His bone density was that of a nondisabled man of his age. Muscle mass had increased. He was nearly in the same shape as when he’d run Investigation Resources at the NYPD,
which oversaw the Crime Scene Unit. Back then he’d walk miles every day, sometimes even running scenes himself—a rarity for a captain—and prowl the streets of the city to collect samples of rocks or dirt or concrete or soot to catalog in his forensic databases.

Because of Sherman’s exercises Rhyme had fewer pressure sores from the hours and hours his body remained in contact with the chair or bed. His bowel and bladder functions were improved and he’d had far fewer urinary tract infections. And he’d had only one episode of autonomic dysreflexia since he’d started the regimen.

Of course another question remained: Would the months of grueling exercise do something to actually
fix
his condition, not just beef up the muscles and bone? A simple test of motor and sensory functions would tell him instantly. But that required a visit to a hospital and Rhyme never seemed to find the time to do it.

“You can’t take an hour off?” Thom would ask.

“An hour? An hour? When in recent memory does a trip to the hospital take an hour? Where would that particular hospital be, Thom? Neverland? Oz?”

But Dr. Sherman had finally pestered Rhyme into agreeing to undergo the test. In half an hour he and Thom would be leaving for New York Hospital to get the final word on his progress.

At the moment, though, Lincoln Rhyme was thinking not of that, but of the bicycle race he was presently engaged in—which
was
on the Matterhorn, thank you very much. And he happened to be beating Lance Armstrong.

When he was finished Thom removed him from the bicycle, bathed then dressed him in a white shirt
and dark slacks. A sitting transfer into his wheelchair and Rhyme drove to the tiny elevator. He went downstairs, where red-haired Amelia Sachs sat in the lab, a former living room, marking evidence from one of the NYPD cases that Rhyme was consulting on.

With his one working digit—the left ring finger—on the touch-pad controller, Rhyme deftly maneuvered the bright red Storm Arrow wheelchair through the lab to a spot next to her. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, pressing his lips against hers hard. They remained like this for a moment, Rhyme enjoying the heat of her proximity, the sweet, floral smell of soap, the tease of her hair against his cheek.

“How far’d you get today?” she asked.

“I could be in northern Westchester by now—if I hadn’t been pulled over.” A dark glance at Thom. The aide winked at Sachs. Water off a duck.

Tall, willowy Sachs was wearing a navy blue pantsuit with one of the black or navy blouses that she usually wore since she’d been promoted to detective. (A tactical handbook for officers warned:
Wearing a contrasting shirt or blouse presents a clearer target at the chest area.
) The outfit was functional and frumpy, a far cry from what she’d worn on the job before she became a cop; Sachs had been a fashion model for a few years. The jacket bulged slightly at the hip, where her Glock automatic pistol rode, and the slacks were men’s; she needed a rear wallet pocket—the only place she felt comfortable stashing her illegal, but often useful, switchblade knife. And, as always, she was wearing sensible, padded-sole shoes. Walking was painful for Amelia Sachs, thanks to arthritis.

“When do we leave?” she asked Rhyme.

“For the hospital? Oh, you don’t have to come. Better to stay here and get the evidence logged in.”

“It’s almost logged. Anyway, it’s not a question of having to come. I
want
to.”

He muttered, “Circus. It’s becoming a circus. I
knew
it would.” He tried to lob a blameful look at Thom but the aide was elsewhere.

The doorbell rang. Thom stepped into the hall and returned a moment later, trailed by Lon Sellitto. “Hey, everybody.” The lieutenant, squat and wearing his typically rumpled suit, nodded cheerfully. Rhyme wondered what his good mood was due to. Maybe something to do with a recent arrest or the NYPD budget for new officers or maybe only that he’d lost a few pounds. The detective’s weight was a yo-yo and he complained about it regularly. Given his own situation, Lincoln Rhyme didn’t have any patience when somebody groused about physical imperfections like too much girth or too little hair.

But today it seemed that the detective’s enthusiastic spirit was work related. He waved several documents in the air. “They upheld the conviction.”

“Ah,” Rhyme said. “The shoe case?”

“Yep.”

Rhyme was pleased, of course, though hardly surprised. Why would he be?
He’d
put together the bulk of the case against the murderer; there was no way the conviction would have collapsed.

It had been an interesting one: Two Balkan diplomats had been murdered on Roosevelt Island—the curious strip of residential land in the middle of the East River—and their right shoes stolen. As often happened when faced with tough cases, the NYPD hired Rhyme on as a consulting criminalist—the au courant jargon for forensic scientist—to help in the investigation.

Amelia Sachs had run the scene, and the evidence had been gathered and analyzed. But the clues had not led them in any obvious directions, and the police were left to conclude that the murders had somehow been inspired by European politics. The case remained open but quiescent for some time—until an FBI memo went around the NYPD about a briefcase abandoned at JFK airport. The case contained articles about global positioning systems, two dozen electronic circuits and a man’s right shoe. The heel had been hollowed out and inside was a computer chip. Rhyme had wondered if it was one of the Roosevelt Island shoes and, sure enough, it was. Other clues in the briefcase led back to the murder scene as well.

Spy stuff . . . shades of Robert Ludlum. Theories began to circulate immediately and the FBI and the State Department went into overdrive. A man from Langley showed up too, the first time Rhyme could remember the CIA taking an interest in one of his cases.

The criminalist still laughed at the disappointment of the global-conspiracy-loving Feds, when, a week after finding the shoe, Detective Amelia Sachs led a tactical team in a take-down of a businessman from Paramus, New Jersey, a gruff fellow who had at best a
USA Today
grasp of foreign politics.

Rhyme had proven through moisture and chemical analysis of the composite heel material that the hollowing-out had occurred weeks
after
the men had been killed. He found too that the computer chip had been purchased from PC Warehouse, and that the GPS information not only wasn’t secret, it had been downloaded from websites that were a year or two out of date.

A staged crime scene, Rhyme had concluded. And went on to trace stone dust in the briefcase to a
kitchen and bathroom countertop company in Jersey. A fast look at the phone records of the owner and credit card receipts led to the conclusion that the man’s wife was sleeping with one of the diplomats. Her husband had found out about the liaison and, along with a Tony Soprano wannabe who worked for him in the slab yard, killed her lover and the man’s unfortunate associate on Roosevelt Island, then staged the evidence to make the crime seem politically motivated.

“An
affair,
yes, though not a diplomatic one,” Rhyme had offered dramatically at the conclusion of his testimony in court. “
Undercover
action, yes, though not espionage.”

“Objection,” the weary defense lawyer had said.

“Sustained.” Though the judge couldn’t keep from laughing.

The jury took forty-two minutes to convict the businessman. The lawyers had, of course, appealed—they always do—but, as Sellitto had just revealed, the appellate court upheld the conviction.

Thom said, “Say, let’s celebrate the victory with a ride to the hospital. You ready?”

“Don’t push it,” Rhyme grumbled.

It was at that moment that Sellitto’s pager went off. He looked at the screen, frowned and then pulled his cell phone off his belt and made a call.

“Sellitto here. What’s up? . . . ” The big man nodded slowly, his hand absently kneading his belly roll. He’d been trying Atkins lately. Eating a lot of steaks and eggs had apparently not had much effect. “She’s all right? . . . And the perp? . . . Yeah . . . That’s not good. Hold on.” He looked up. “A ten twenty-four call just came in. That African-American museum on Five-five? The vic was a young girl. Teenager. Attempted rape.”

Amelia Sachs winced at this news, exuding sympathy. Rhyme had a different reaction; his mind automatically wondered: How many crime scenes were there? Did the perp chase her and possibly drop evidence? Did they grapple, exchanging trace? Did he take public transportation to and from the scene? Or was a car involved?